Oregon turning off when arriving in "zone"

[+stellarscapes]

Just did two new Wherigo caches with my Oregon 400t.

The first one worked fine, no problems.

When doing the second Wherigo, I arrived at the first zone and it

automatically turned the GPS off. I turned it back on and it did the

same thing three times. I knew where the second location was, so

I continued on to it and once I got into the zone for location #2, it

worked fine at that location. It worked great all the way through

locations 3 and 4, but once I arrived in the zone at location 5, the

same thing happened - it turned the Oregon off.

 

Any advice or ideas about what's happening?

Thanks.

[+Tequila]

If there is a .gwl file, send it to the cartridge owner so they can figure out what is happening.

 

I have seen this when the zone was very small. The player enters the zone, thinks they are still in it but because of GPS drift has exited the zone. Sometimes this will cause a power off.

[Ranger Fox]

I've seen that happen intermittently on Oregons. Yesterday, I had five Oregon and one Colorado user attempting one of my cartridges. The Colorado user finished just fine. As for the Oregons, they turned off at random zone entries. It was just my luck that when I borrowed one, it worked all the way through. This morning, one of the Oregon users tried it again and it worked.

 

The moral of the story: It might not be the cartridge author's problem; it's likely to be the GPSr's. This seems to be more of a possibility when an Oregon is involved.

[+Tequila]

I think part of the Oregon trick is to take your time pushing buttons. Count to 5 between buttons.

[+Danatisy]

I've had this "Shut Down" problem with the cartridge I builded lately.

It appeared that pictures weight were too heavy.

I have changes some of the Medias and no more turn off problem anymore.

Bottom line for Oregon's vs Wherigo Cartridges: 1Mb max for a cartridge.

[+Phillips4]

Hoping someone can help me with a very similar situation. I've got a new cart ("Wolfden Loop Trail" in Georgia). Two players have run the course in the past three days - one using an Oregon 400 & the other using an Oregon 450t). The entire tour was successful for both attempts until entering zone #10. Within a foot or so of the zone the machines "freeze" or "go black" (sorry for the lack of detail but I'm getting my info 2nd hand). The tour works fine on emulator and my PCC phone w/external GPS.

 

As you can see from the cart I have no pictures, no objects moving zones, no timers, etc. - just a simple tour guide. I've read in other topics that some code may be more troublesome for Oregons and there are ways to avoid this code, but I can't find specific examples of what irks the Oregons. I've read here that I (as the cart author) can check a player's GWL file and search for problems, but I'm not sure I know what I'm looking for.

 

If anyone is interested in helping me thru this I'd greatly appreciate it. Email me thru my GC account and I'll happily send you the LUA file for your reference. TIA.

[+Lions Fan]

I think the message in your final screen is too big. I ran it through a character counter and there are 1109 characters.

 

I helped troubleshoot another cartridge that had a similar problem. Almost all Garmins (Colorado and Oregons) crashed at the final screen - It had 1025 characters. I shortened the message to about 850 characters (and changed nothing else) and it fixed the shut down problem. I'm not sure what the magic number is, but I suspect that it may vary depending on what other maps, cartridges, caches are loaded on the device.

[Ranger Fox]

Yes, too much text would do it, Lions Fan. Phillips4, try breaking your text into several message boxes.

[+Phillips4]

Thanks both. I've found that I can't 'series' multiple "Show message to player" events on zone entry (always shows the last message without showing previous ones). I've seen & played carts where the OK button takes you to a new message screen....I think I've found that I have to 'nest' the messages: checking the box at the bottom, customizing the text of the "OK" button, then running another "show message" script...

 

Is this method the way to get this done, or am I creating yet another problem? TIA

[Ranger Fox]

It depends, actually. The "show a series of messages to the player" action can be used if you do not need other actions performed after the messages to wait. If you do, nesting the "show a message to the player" would be better.

 

For instance, if you wanted to ask a question at the end, you could not use "show a series of messages to the player" because the Player would show the first message, then move right on to asking the question. Therefore, you'd have to nest the question input action in the last "show a message to the player" action.

 

However, if all you wanted to do was mark the cartridge as complete, you could use "show a series of messages to the player" because something like that doesn't usually need to wait until the last message.

[+Phillips4]

Thanks! I don't know how I missed that. Added a couple of images and split the dialog up to avoid long screens; can't wait to borrow an Oregon & run it.

[+sTeamTraen]

Feedback in the Earwigo discussion group from the author of a complex cartridge tends to confirm the idea that there is a practical upper limit of around 1000 characters in messages on the Oregon models,

[+TheHarvesters]

This cart:

http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.a...c8-e1b7b2cd1999

 

and the feedback from it so far suggests that a safer limit to consider would be 850 characters. Bear in mind that new lines seem to take up a fair chunk of memory too.